First Look: Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor Come to Broadway as Romeo + Juliet—With an Assist from Jack Antonoff
The show has been highly anticipated and details beyond the cast list and creators have been largely kept under wraps until now. This is Romeo + Juliet like you’ve never seen before, exposed bra straps and all.
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: Those were actually stuffed animals scattered across the stage at the beginning of the show.
By far the best feeling of the show comes from one teaser trailer featuring Zegler and Connor in suburban New Jersey, set to “Tiny Moves” by Antonoff’s band Bleachers and released in May. They play on a couch and in a bathtub full of stuffed animals (“There are a lot of bears cotton in this piece,” Connor says, Zegler backs him up, eyes wide: “He ain’t even lying”), wearing a windbreaker and tank top, Zegler-as-Juliet bra back visible up the back of her shirt, Connor-as-Romeo kneels on the bedsheets in black boxer shorts and caresses her face. They promise that that sense of imperfect, full youth will be present in the show, even if the dialogue spans several hundred years.
“We didn’t change any of the language, but I think it’s also very grounded in modern times and with today’s youth,” Connor said. “I think this work is exploring a lot about today’s generation of young people and exploring things like violence, sex, social pressure and all those interesting things.”
It has never been clearly established whether the Verona fair where Gold’s production took place took place in Shakespeare’s Italy or, say, Verona, New Jersey, a suburb whose name made Zegler jump up and exclaim “I was play volleyball there!” while Connor marvels, “Oh, is that really a place?”
The theater where the Montagues, Capulets and their associates will unravel their bloody love story is more than just a stage, too: The Circle in the Square isn’t just where Gold won a Tony for directing the musical dramatic. Happy houseor where he recently produced his critically acclaimed play Enemies of the people, But it’s also the closest thing Broadway has to a theater in the round, its thrust stage meaning there’s no bad seat for the audience and no place to hide for star-crossed stars. worry. Producers have announced the number of floor seats for the show, which Zegler says will be “like watching a movie in 4DX” for those who choose that type of seating, while Connor warns, “You don’t just at the edge of the action, you’re in it, honestly. That’s the way we want it to be. We wanted to film these incredibly iconic scenes and you wanted to feel like you were there.”
Zegler, a New Jersey native, was amazed to see the theater transformed for the show. “As someone who grew up watching shows at this theater, I had never seen it used in such a way, where it became a jungle gym for the cast and crew,” she said. the crew of this show,” she said. “It’s like running, jumping, climbing, and I think that’s a really fun thing to apply to it, and that’s why we’ve all never been in better shape.”
And adding to the “extremely immersive” feeling of that intimate location, Zegler says, is Antonoff’s score. The show is not a musical, but the two will sing in it and tease each other. Or, as Connor puts it, “She sings. I will try.”
